Alessandra Ferri

#OurHouseToYourHouse: tonight’s Royal Opera House’s 2nd live concert and next week’s programme

20 June 2020 by gramilano Leave a Comment

Tonight is the second of the Live from Covent Garden concerts at 7.30pm BST which will be broadcast via the Royal Opera House website from Covent Garden. These are the first live performances at the Royal Opera House since the building closed its doors to the public on 17 March.

Tonight’s concert includes a performance of Albert Schönberg’s reduction of Gustav Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde with tenor David Butt Philip, mezzo-soprano Sarah Connolly and soloists of the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House. Principal dancer of The Royal Ballet Vadim Muntagirov will perform Frederick Ashton’s Dance of the Blessed Spirits. The solo was initially created in 1978 for Anthony Dowell and is a showcase of balance and poise.

[VIDEO] La Scala’s latest interviews with Roberto Bolle and Juan Diego Flórez

27 May 2020 by gramilano Leave a Comment

Milan’s La Scala may be closed, but the theatre’s Digital Department is working hard.

Five weeks ago, Dominique Meyer, the theatre’s new intendant, started a series of interviews with artists who work in the theatre. The musical director, Riccardo Chailly, was his first ‘guest’, and since then he has talked to the director Davide Livermore, principal dancers Nicoletta Manni and Timofej Andrijashenko, the conductor Michele Mariotti, and singers

American Ballet Theatre: Together Tonight – an 80th Anniversary YouTube celebration

11 May 2020 by gramilano Leave a Comment

May 2020 was to have been a special month for the American Ballet Theatre – the time to celebrate its 80th anniversary.

American Ballet Theatre – known as Ballet Theatre from 1939 until 1957 – was founded in 1939 by Lucia Chase and Richard Pleasant and its first performance was on 11 January 1940.

Chase was its director, together with Oliver Smith, from 1945 to 1980. Mikhail Baryshnikov took over until 1989. Smith returned with Jane Hermann from 1990 to 1992, when Kevin McKenzie took over as artistic director, a position her still holds.

ABT will present American Ballet Theatre: Together Tonight, a virtual celebration in support of the ABT Crisis Relief Fund on its YouTube Channel…

Interview with The Royal Ballet’s Lauren Cuthbertson – so much passion

2 May 2020 by gramilano Leave a Comment

On 14 March 2020, The Royal Ballet’s principal dancer Lauren Cuthbertson was dancing Aurora in The Sleeping Beauty on the stage of the Mariinsky Theatre. A rare honour. She was dancing with former Royal Ballet dancer and Mariinsky principal dancer Xander Parish and cheered on by her mother, her boyfriend and his parents. Two days later, they were returning to London on the Gatwick Express when a message arrived: Royal Ballet classes, rehearsals and performances were suspended with immediate effect because of the spread of the coronavirus.

I’d heard from friends in Europe and America that things were shutting down, so I knew what was coming. So we drove out of London, and now I’m in the countryside with my boyfriend and his parents. I’m lucky to have a garden – if I were in London, it would be a very different story.

Alessandra Ferri: The art of becoming a couple is the gamble of a lifetime

22 March 2020 by gramilano Leave a Comment

Alessandra Ferri has been interpreting Eleonora Duse in John Neumeier’s ballet Duse, most recently in Venice at the beginning of February. Does she feel she has anything in common with Italy’s most famous 19th-century actress?

Much, starting with my approach to a work, stripping away the façades that for me have no part in an art that is an internal journey. You must know yourself, and grow, and have the courage to be true to yourself. It leaves me vulnerable but, at the same time, strong. Also for me, art was always an anchor for me to cling on to during life’s difficult moments.

I think my approach to interpreting a character has remained the same, from Giselle to MacMillan’s ballets: real acting, without outsized gesturing. Two significant roles for Duse were Juliet and Marguerite Gautier, as they were for me. Another interesting coincidence is that Juliet was also her first important character.

Dancing Times, September edition – with Gramilano’s Danza in Italia column including Woolf Works at La Scala and a Glass triple bill in Rome

28 August 2019 by gramilano Leave a Comment

The latest issue of Dancing Times is out tomorrow. In September’s issue, I cover Wayne McGregor’s “amazing” Woolf Works at La Scala with Alessandra Ferri giving a “frighteningly intense” performance alongside an excellent cast from La Scala Ballet including “powerful and touching” performances from Timofej Andrijashenko as Septimus and Claudio Coviello as Evans, and Gioacchino […]

Paolo Bordogna answers the Gramilano Questionnaire… singers’ edition

10 June 2019 by gramilano Leave a Comment

Q&A in italiano When did you start singing? On the staircase of my apartment building, there was an echo that added force to my voice; I listened to it as though it were my voice. It was perhaps a way to conquer my shyness. Why did you start singing? One of my classmates invited me […]

McGregor’s Woolf Works thrills and enthralls at La Scala

1 May 2019 by gramilano Leave a Comment

The La Scala Ballet usually fields a first cast, and several alternative casts, but not with Wayne McGregor’s Woolf Works – here it was very much a case of a first cast and a second cast. The first featured two guests from the original Royal Opera House production from 2015 – Alessandra Ferri and Federico […]

First photos of Wayne McGregor’s Woolf Works at La Scala with Alessandra Ferri, Federico Bonelli and Company dancers

8 April 2019 by gramilano Leave a Comment

These are the first photos of La Scala’s restaging of Wayne McGregor’s Woolf Works created for The Royal Ballet in 2015. The work was seen again in London in 2017, and in Milan, two of the original interpreters- Alessandra Ferri and Federico Bonelli – reprise their roles. The photos are accompanied by extracts of a […]

Interview with Alessandra Ferri: Maturing I find myself smiling more

6 April 2019 by gramilano Leave a Comment

I’m enjoying a new chapter in my life having the fortune to play women of my age and not romantic roles like the Giselles, Carmens, Juliets, Manons… all wonderful, but enough, they’re part of another Alessandra. Now I’m a 55-year-old with the knowledge of how extraordinary that is. Alessandra Ferri, now in Milan for a […]